WORRIED residents have raised concerns over the provision of emergency care in west Cumbria - as the shadow health secretary said a one-hour journey to A&E was ‘not acceptable’.
A public meeting was held at Whitehaven Civic Hall last week following reports of recent staff shortages at the A&E department of West Cumberland Hospital, which could mean that the NHS Trust is unable to provide appropriate overnight cover in the future.
It was hosted by Josh MacAlister, Labour’s candidate for Whitehaven and Workington, with Wes Streeting MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for health and social care and Mahesh Dhebar, of the We Need West Cumberland Hospital campaign group.
North Cumbria Integrated Care (NCIC) NHS Foundation Trust has said there is no intention to close the A&E department at West Cumberland Hospital.
Speaking at the meeting, Mahesh Dhebar, a former consultant at the West Cumberland Hospital said: “They can’t recruit. There is no point in having an accident and emergency department if you cannot staff it.
“Don’t turn West Cumberland Hospital into the biggest cottage hospital in the country. We want emergency healthcare in Whitehaven.
“The people of west Cumbria want honesty and truth about healthcare provision. We deserve better healthcare, we want better healthcare and we demand better healthcare.”
A former non-executive director of the NHS primary care trust said there needed to be more support for doctors who come to work in the county.
He said: “Recruitment is always a big issue for Cumbria. People think because we have the lakes, people will come to work for us but they won’t because they have no support.
“We have to get a better system of getting consultants to come here and supporting them.”
A member of the public said: “The concern is drift. Everything is based on statistics. If A&E goes for a few days because they can’t staff it, the conversation then comes, ‘oh people are coping’.
“Before you know it, the people who hold the purse strings will be able to justify withdrawing it altogether. It’s important at this stage to grab hold of it because if it starts to drift, that will be your starting point.”
A secretary at West Cumberland Hospital said she had worked with countless locum doctors over the years.
She said: “The issue is they are interviewed at Carlisle and are told they will have to do clinics down there.
“They come [to clinics in Whitehaven] on the slowest train in the world and then they get here and say, ‘can I just get an Uber from the station?’ We don’t have Ubers here. They have no idea where they are coming to work.
“My suggestion is interviewing them in Whitehaven so then it’s not a shock how far it is.”
Wes Streeting MP said he had fought and won a successful campaign to save his own A&E department in Ilford.
He said: “It is not acceptable at any time for people who go to West Cumberland Hospital A&E to be told they are being sent an hour up the road to Carlisle.
“I fought tooth and nail to save the A&E department at my local hospital. It was the A&E department that saved my life when I went in with kidney stones and they found undiagnosed kidney cancer. I owe my life to that A&E department.
“Had that A&E department closed, the alternatives for me were hospitals 15 minutes in either direction. For me and my constituents, that was outrageous.
“Now I realise how ridiculous a 15-minute journey sounds when you’re being told you face an hour.
“It’s really important for people to have services close to where they live, particularly emergency services. If you have got heart attack or stroke symptoms, every second counts.”
A spokesperson for the North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust said: “We have recently been successful in recruiting two more permanent consultants to our A&E team - one who has recently joined us and one who is joining us in September and will be based at West Cumberland Hospital.
“While we do still have some gaps, which we cover with agency locum and bank doctors, we are in the best position we have been in for some time.
“In the longer term, we have strategies to train more clinical staff to a higher level in line with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s medical workforce guidelines for small and rural emergency departments.
“We also attend recruitment fairs having recently been in both London and Glasgow. Our A&E and Recruitment teams continue to work extremely hard to attract clinicians to West Cumbria.
“As we have said, we are committed to maintaining a full A&E service at West Cumberland Hospital and there is no intention to close the department.”
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